(CNN)The rain mercifully has stopped in southeast Texas. But a week after Hurricane Harvey, boaters still are shuttling people away from a few high-water areas as millions struggle with what the storm has left -- tens of thousands of destroyed homes and altered lives, and grim efforts to find those who may not have survived.

At least 47 people have died from the storm. Other statistics only begin to hint at the scope of the punishing deluge and what the months of recovery will entail:
About 27 trillion gallons of rain fell on Texas and Louisiana over six days -- enough to fill the Houston Astrodome 85,000 times.
More than 72,000 people have been rescued.
And about 136,000 structures were flooded in Harris County, home of Houston, alone -- about 10% of the structures on record there, the county says.

Danger is far from over in places such as Beaumont, Texas, a city of 118,000 dealing with a cruel juxtaposition: inundated in spots with floodwater as its residents lack flowing tap water because two pumps there failed.
"The river ... on the east line of our city should crest today, and it will start falling, (but) our biggest situation is the water supply is cut off," said Capt. Brad Pennison of Beaumont's fire department.

The loss of drinking water has forced an evacuation of patients from Beaumont's Baptist Hospital. Patients in intensive care already have been airlifted or taken by ambulance to other facilities, but officials still plan to evacuate 85 people -- including 11 babies born prematurely and three other newborns -- who remained there Friday morning.

Dr. Snehal Doshi, who runs the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit, said several preemies' parents had been prevented from visiting their infants because of flooding elsewhere.
"There are some parents who simply haven't seen their babies for days, just because it's not safe for them to come to the hospital," he said.
For city residents, officials ordered bottled water and set up distribution points Friday.[Edited 9/1/17 12:17pm]

Yes, 2e. I saw last night they were evacuating folks there on military planes. When the pumps fail, tainted water backs up into the system and it's a long process to get it all going again with potable water.

Yes, 2e. I saw last night they were evacuating folks there on military planes. When the pumps fail, tainted water backs up into the system and it's a long process to get it all going again with potable water.

Yes it's just terrible. The aftermath of this hurricane is going to be one major cleanup.[Edited 9/2/17 4:57am]

In 2016 the US elected a president who believes that human-driven global warming is a hoax. It was the hottest year on record, in which the US was hammered by a series of climate-related disasters. Yet the total combined coverage for the entire year on the evening and Sunday news programmes on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News amounted to 50 minutes. Our greatest predicament, the issue that will define our lives, has been blotted from the public’s mind.

This is not an accident. But nor (with the exception of Fox News) is it likely to be a matter of policy. It reflects a deeply ingrained and scarcely conscious self-censorship. Reporters and editors ignore the subject because they have an instinct for avoiding trouble. To talk about climate breakdown (which in my view is a better term than the curiously bland labels we attach to this crisis) is to question not only Trump, not only current environmental policy, not only current economic policy – but the entire political and economic system.

It is to expose a programme that relies on robbing the future to fuel the present, that demands perpetual growth on a finite planet. It is to challenge the very basis of capitalism; to inform us that our lives are dominated by a system that cannot be sustained – a system that is destined, if it is not replaced, to destroy everything.

To claim there is no link between climate breakdown and the severity of Hurricane Harvey is like claiming there is no link between the warm summer we have experienced and the end of the last ice age. Every aspect of our weather is affected by the fact that global temperatures rose by about 4C between the ice age and the 19th century. And every aspect of our weather is affected by the 1C of global warming caused by human activities. While no weather event can be blamed solely on human-driven warming, none is unaffected by it.

We know that the severity and impact of hurricanes on coastal cities is exacerbated by at least two factors: higher sea levels, caused primarily by the thermal expansion of seawater; and greater storm intensity, caused by higher sea temperatures and the ability of warm air to hold more water than cold air.

Before it reached the Gulf of Mexico, Harvey had been demoted from a tropical storm to a tropical wave. But as it reached the Gulf, where temperatures this month have been far above average, it was upgraded first to a tropical depression, then to a category one hurricane. It might have been expected to weaken as it approached the coast, as hurricanes churn the sea, bringing cooler waters to the surface. But the water it brought up from 100 metres and more was also unusually warm. By the time it reached land, Harvey had intensified to a category four hurricane.

We were warned about this. In June, for instance, Robert Kopp, a professor of Earth sciences, predicted: “In the absence of major efforts to reduce emissions and strengthen resilience, the Gulf Coast will take a massive hit. Its exposure to sea-level rise – made worse by potentially stronger hurricanes – poses a major risk to its communities.”

To raise this issue, I’ve been told on social media, is to politicise Hurricane Harvey. It is an insult to the victims and a distraction from their urgent need. The proper time to discuss it is when people have rebuilt their homes, and scientists have been able to conduct an analysis of just how great the contribution from climate breakdown might have been. In other words, talk about it only when it’s out of the news. When researchers determined, nine years on, that human activity had made a significant contribution to Hurricane Katrina, the information scarcely registered.

I believe it is the silence that’s political. To report the storm as if it were an entirely natural phenomenon, like last week’s eclipse of the sun, is to take a position. By failing to make the obvious link and talk about climate breakdown, media organisations ensure our greatest challenge goes unanswered. They help push the world towards catastrophe.

Hurricane Harvey offers a glimpse of a likely global future; a future whose average temperatures are as different from ours as ours are from those of the last ice age. It is a future in which emergency becomes the norm, and no state has the capacity to respond. It is a future in which, as a paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters notes, disasters like Houston’s occur in some cities several times a year. It is a future that, for people in countries such as Bangladesh, has already arrived, almost unremarked on by the rich world’s media. It is the act of not talking that makes this nightmare likely to materialise.

In Texas, the connection could scarcely be more apparent. The storm ripped through the oil fields, forcing rigs and refineries to shut down, including those owned by some of the 25 companies that have produced more than half the greenhouse gas emissions humans have released since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Hurricane Harvey has devastated a place in which climate breakdown is generated, and in which the policies that prevent it from being addressed are formulated.

Like Trump, who denies human-driven global warming but who wants to build a wall around his golf resort in Ireland to protect it from the rising seas, these companies, some of which have spent millions sponsoring climate deniers, have progressively raised the height of their platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, in response to warnings about higher seas and stronger storms. They have grownfrom 40ft above sea level in 1940, to 70ft in the 1990s, to 91ft today.

This is not, however, a story of mortal justice. In Houston, as everywhere else, it is generally the poorer communities, least responsible for the problem, who are hit first and hit worst. But the connection between cause and effect should appeal to even the slowest minds.

The problem is not confined to the US. Across the world, the issue that hangs over every aspect of our lives is marginalised, except on the rare occasions where world leaders gather to discuss it in sombre tones (then sombrely agree to do almost nothing), whereupon the instinct to follow the machinations of power overrides the instinct to avoid a troubling subject. When they do cover the issue, they tend to mangle it.

In the UK, the BBC this month again invited the climate-change denier Nigel Lawson on to the Today programme, in the mistaken belief that impartiality requires a balance between correct facts and false ones. The broadcaster seldom makes such a mess of other topics, because it takes them more seriously.

When Trump’s enforcers instruct officials and scientists to purge any mention of climate change from their publications, we are scandalised. But when the media does it, without the need for a memo, we let it pass. This censorship is invisible even to the perpetrators, woven into the fabric of organisations that are constitutionally destined to leave the major questions of our times unasked. To acknowledge this issue is to challenge everything. To challenge everything is to become an outcast.

“The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”
- Thomas Jefferson

The irony of the big government zombies who know they have to do massive flood funding or they will lose big.

They will use it as a club to cut Health Care and Medicaid most likely. Wonder if Trump would be kissing the ass of a blue state the way he is with Texas? I'm not saying they don't deserve it, this is a monster disaster, no doubt.

The irony of the big government zombies who know they have to do massive flood funding or they will lose big.

They will use it as a club to cut Health Care and Medicaid most likely. Wonder if Trump would be kissing the ass of a blue state the way he is with Texas? I'm not saying they don't deserve it, this is a monster disaster, no doubt.

He'll use it to get their votes in the next election. He will keep reminding g Texans about the funds that were sent, to rebuild Texas.

They will use it as a club to cut Health Care and Medicaid most likely. Wonder if Trump would be kissing the ass of a blue state the way he is with Texas? I'm not saying they don't deserve it, this is a monster disaster, no doubt.

He'll use it to get their votes in the next election. He will keep reminding g Texans about the funds that were sent, to rebuild Texas.

Of course, that's how he does things. Predictable.

"When you talk about the press, it’s not about journalists; it’s about the free-flowing information that the American public is supposed to get. When you bash the press, you’re bashing the idea of getting truth out." - April Ryan, NYT

I'm waiting to see what Irma does now, ugh. Hope she stays out of the Gulf. Out to sea for you!

Made it to Houston late last night, stayed at my favorite mother-in-law's home. We're going to go to our house in Clear Lake this afternoon and assess the damage. I know we have a lot to clean up, but my son and neighbors have done most of the heavy lifting.

Irma is a bad b****. I have a friend that lives on Sanibel Island on the Gulf coast, about 100 miles from Miami but on the other side of the state. I'm doing everything I can to get that guy to FLY YHE HELL OUT OF THERE, but so far no luck.

I am amazed that ANYONE with the resources to leave (which he has) would choose to "ride it out". I want to beat my head against a wall.

Yes, it is. There are more than a dozen Superfund sites that flooded. But the extent of the damage isn't known yet.

Much of west Houston is still under water. My friend that lives just outside Beltway 8, off Wilcrest Drive, still has 4 feet of water in his house. Luckily, the FBI has boats loaded with armed agents, keeping what's left of their homes safe. Everyone that lives in that neighborhood has lost everything that was on their first floor. And I mean EVERYTHING.

I'm waiting to see what Irma does now, ugh. Hope she stays out of the Gulf. Out to sea for you!

Made it to Houston late last night, stayed at my favorite mother-in-law's home. We're going to go to our house in Clear Lake this afternoon and assess the damage. I know we have a lot to clean up, but my son and neighbors have done most of the heavy lifting.

Irma is a bad b****. I have a friend that lives on Sanibel Island on the Gulf coast, about 100 miles from Miami but on the other side of the state. I'm doing everything I can to get that guy to FLY YHE HELL OUT OF THERE, but so far no luck.

I am amazed that ANYONE with the resources to leave (which he has) would choose to "ride it out". I want to beat my head against a wall.

Thanks for updating. Things seem to be coming along. Hang in there. Favorite mother-in-law? Good to have a choice, lol. It's emotional to see everything, at least it was for me. Somebody even wrote a goofy song about it - Ain't dere no more.

Made it to Houston late last night, stayed at my favorite mother-in-law's home. We're going to go to our house in Clear Lake this afternoon and assess the damage. I know we have a lot to clean up, but my son and neighbors have done most of the heavy lifting.

Irma is a bad b****. I have a friend that lives on Sanibel Island on the Gulf coast, about 100 miles from Miami but on the other side of the state. I'm doing everything I can to get that guy to FLY YHE HELL OUT OF THERE, but so far no luck.

I am amazed that ANYONE with the resources to leave (which he has) would choose to "ride it out". I want to beat my head against a wall.

Thanks for updating. Things seem to be coming along. Hang in there. Favorite mother-in-law? Good to have a choice, lol. It's emotional to see everything, at least it was for me. Somebody even wrote a goofy song about it - Ain't dere no more.

LOL, it's a joke. She's the only mother-in-law I've ever had, or will have.

Matthew 5:38-39
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Yes, it is. There are more than a dozen Superfund sites that flooded. But the extent of the damage isn't known yet.

Much of west Houston is still under water. My friend that lives just outside Beltway 8, off Wilcrest Drive, still has 4 feet of water in his house. Luckily, the FBI has boats loaded with armed agents, keeping what's left of their homes safe. Everyone that lives in that neighborhood has lost everything that was on their first floor. And I mean EVERYTHING.

Ugh. I cannot even imagine. My Houston friends had minor flooding, thank God - but I cannot believe what I am seeing on TV.

[Edited 9/6/17 7:34am]

"When you talk about the press, it’s not about journalists; it’s about the free-flowing information that the American public is supposed to get. When you bash the press, you’re bashing the idea of getting truth out." - April Ryan, NYT

Oh, "The Good Life". Why do I not feel sorry for these people? They will survive - of that I am sure. Sorry the weather interrupted their 2 week holiday... Rumors of looting & lawnessness? No risk Paradise? No such thing. Even Richard Branson acknowledged that.

Oh, "The Good Life". Why do I not feel sorry for these people? They will survive - of that I am sure. Sorry the weather interrupted their 2 week holiday... Rumors of looting & lawnessness? No risk Paradise? No such thing. Even Richard Branson acknowledged that.

If this is true, and they felt it was a lawless island, which it is not, then why the hell did they go there? Typical ass, rich tourists going to Caribbean islands, and acting like they deserve carte Blanche service over the natives who live there. I read they were getting help, so not sure how true this story is.

Oh, "The Good Life". Why do I not feel sorry for these people? They will survive - of that I am sure. Sorry the weather interrupted their 2 week holiday... Rumors of looting & lawnessness? No risk Paradise? No such thing. Even Richard Branson acknowledged that.

If this is true, and they felt it was a lawless island, which it is not, then why the hell did they go there? Typical ass, rich tourists going to Caribbean islands, and acting like they deserve carte Blanche service over the natives who live there. I read they were getting help, so not sure how true this story is.

Yes, not sure how "true" it is either. But hometown is defending their own. There is no reason for anyone else to print that story. Squabbles that are funny from my Caribbean experience - the outrage? - this pirate adventure sucks!